


the stars no longer shine for us

by cyndaquils



Series: Shingeki no Drabbles [4]
Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Character Study, Ficlet, Gen, Regret, spoilers for female titan arc, spoilers for snk manga (colossal titan and armored titan)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-26
Updated: 2013-10-26
Packaged: 2017-12-30 11:53:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 411
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1018293
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cyndaquils/pseuds/cyndaquils
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>you’ve made your choices, now you’ve got to live with them. — Annie</p>
            </blockquote>





	the stars no longer shine for us

**Author's Note:**

> I love Annie so much and sometimes I don't think I write her in-character, so it took me like a month to write ~400 words. that's really all the background there is to this story. (also, I'm going under the assumption that Annie regrets at least a little of what she's done. next time I'll write one where she doesn't regret anything at all.)

She watched the cleanup with fear in her eyes, fear and guilt and shock. They never said it’d be this terrible, that her stomach would drop after she’d taken away Marco’s Three Dimensional Maneuver Gear and left him for dead. They never said the betrayal in his eyes would make her want to scream and rip her hair out and question everything she’s ever known because it wasn’t supposed to happen like this. She wasn’t supposed go get attached, not even to Bertholdt and Reiner.

When she realized her only chance to catch Eren was the fifty-seventh expedition, she threw away her humanity—she wanted to go home. But she watched as her attachment to her former classmates got the better of her, how she let Armin live (she curses herself for that every day now, why, why, why). She remembered Levi cutting her open limb from limb, remembered Mikasa aiming directly for her neck, remembered Eren being dragged away from her, her mouth split open as tears flowed out.

( _I failed_ , she thought, _I failed, I failed, I failed_ )

Her bet was played, and she thought that maybe it was too much—drawing Eren’s titan form; it’s her end, it’s where everything goes wrong—she could feel it. His punches became more forceful and all she could do now was run and climb, fearing for her own life (fearing for Bertholdt and Reiner’s, they’re going to die; they’re going to _die_.) Her fingers sunk into Wall Sina, throwing away rock as she heard the faint sound of Mikasa scaling the wall. She remembered staring, remembered her finger getting slashed off, remembered being kicked off, falling.

A last ditch effort—she encased herself in her unbreakable crystal, shut off in a nearly lifeless state. It’s there her memories flooded her, flashes of flying limbs and roars that reverberated across meters upon meters of land. Biting down on her hand, blood splashing, her father’s voice. Sneaking into the territory behind the walls wasn’t all that hard, not with the chaos that Bertholdt and Reiner had caused—but entangled with that there were memories of Armin, of Mikasa, of Mina, of Marco, of everyone. She had to make a choice—a choice to end the war.

She was given a choice, but sometimes, she wasn’t sure if she made the right one.

( _you’ve made your choices_ , her mind screamed at her, _you’ve made your choices and now you’ve got to live with them_ )


End file.
